


The True Noblesse

by Queen_of_the_Ruckus



Category: Noblesse (Manhwa)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Backstory, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:42:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21816100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queen_of_the_Ruckus/pseuds/Queen_of_the_Ruckus
Summary: Long before "Noblesse" referred to a single entity, the title belonged to a matched set.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 35





	The True Noblesse

Raizel turned from the open window of his favorite sitting room at the gentle creak of the oaken door. Small sounds drifted in on the breeze, the day to day activities of his House a pleasant whisper in an otherwise silent room. He gave a short nod in greeting, eyes automatically drawn to the Lord’s summons clenched tight in his brother’s fist. Without a word he followed him out of the room. Members of the household bowed deeply and gracefully at their passing, prideful in their service and their position within the House of the Noblesse.

In the royal palace, doors slid open well in advance of their approach. They crossed each threshold side by side, steps measured and pacing matched. Nobles, both pure and mixed, as well as their contracted humans all but fled from their approach. Bowing low, they waited silently in the shadows, daring to resume movement only after the echo of footfalls had died into nothing. Two perfectly matched silhouettes entered the Lord’s throne room, bowing their respect before splitting off to flank the Noble Lord’s high-backed throne. Similar as they were, the Noble Clan Leaders in attendance could immediately distinguish between the two, relying primarily on their customary placement but also noting with care the subtle differences in expression, a slight wave in one’s hair. 

The accused was brought before the throne unbound, flanked by two Clan Leaders, where she knelt before the Lord. He questioned her formally, following the ritual of established routine. Witnesses followed to present their testimony. Efficient and detached, the hard-eyed Noblesse parsed through the Noble woman before them, noting the clicks of thought and sparks of emotion corresponding to the crime for which she was accused. The trial was a formality; her guilt and the depth of her transgression already laid bare before him. 

When the formal procession was complete and nothing else remained to be said, the Lord glanced expectantly at the Noblesse standing to his left. All who were gathered in the Lord’s court waited, silence filling the vast expanse of the room. It was the responsibility of the Noblesse to make a judgement. It didn’t have to be him. He was certainly better suited to it, having a keener eye for discerning motivations and recognizing deceit than his reserved brother. Regardless, he still wished that Raizel would step forward to state this conviction in his stead. Desperately he waited, a bitter taste on his tongue, his stomach tied in knots. 

But he had ceased imploring his brother through their connection a long time ago. It was pointless. The outcome did not change. After the silence stretched on to the point where the accused began to exude the faint glimmer of hope that she would be declared innocent of her crimes, he took a single step forward. The Noblesse uttered his judgement and his sentence without emotion. 

Nodding once, the Lord turned then to the Noblesse at his right. Solemnly, and with sorrow in his eyes, he made his way down the stone steps of the dais to stand directly before the convicted woman. She leapt to her feet in panic, red eyes wide and darting, flinching as though to strike at him. 

“Accept your fate with dignity,” the Lord commanded coldy.

Raising up a bloody field of power around those assembled in the cavernous room, Raizel held out a single hand, outstretched as though to rest atop her scarlet hair. He stopped short of touching her, fingers curling instead to brush lightly against his palm. Terrified eyes locked in a stare with his own. He bore witness to her end in silence as the woman dissolved into a stream of softly glowing red sparks. Bits of soul and forfeited life drifted aimlessly in the stillness. The two Noblesse marched silently from the room, not looking back.

Where conversation and comfort would have once passed between them, now only silence grew, oppressive and echoing in its expanse. Withdrawn from Raizel, his guilt and fury held no outlet. He was the judge, and so it fell to his brother to serve as executioner. What one sentenced the other was to carry, the life of his other half held hostage against an abuse of their unfathomable power. And yet, his brother was apparently unconcerned with his own fate. Bits of his brother’s soul were burned away at his command, each duty-bound conviction falling like a stone from his lips. 

He could recall with ease every instance in which his brother had stepped forward to decide the fate of another. In all of their uncounted years, it had happened but twice. Yet he could tell the difference in himself after each execution, a subtle fracturing of self, a quiet degradation in his soul.

Even knowing the heavy price, he still found himself unable to let the guilty walk free. His duty ran through his veins like the very blood that was their weapon. It made him feel heavy and wrong, twisted and trapped. Every time he brought himself to action to preserve and protect the Nobles, he himself brought harm to his innocent Raizel. Guilt spiraled and dripped and pooled in his heart.

_Guilty._

The single thought brought him up short. After the barest moment, Raizel stopped as well, gazing back at him in quiet concern.

“It is nothing,” he offered in response, deflecting the question smoothly.

As the mansion grew to loom above them, he excused himself from his brother’s company. He watched as his figure disappeared into their house, materializing predictably within the frame of a third story window.

Then, with Raizel safely stowed away, he turned his thoughts and attentions to other matters.

***  
This time, when Edian came to call, she was different. More insistent. Less indulgent of his quiet habits. Instead of waiting tirelessly with him by the window, she grasped him firmly by the arm and ushered him to leave. They bid their farewell to the members of the household who eyed them curiously, Raizel oblivious to the rumors that would surely spark like dry kindling as soon as they had safely passed outside of hearing.

She guided him windingly to the gates of her own House, detouring heavily through moonlit gardens and other such novelties unfamiliar to the Noblesse. Once within, she walked with him down long pillared hallways, past row upon row of vases filled with red. She opened the door to the bed chamber herself, not a single servant had shown themselves in their presence. A slow blush crept up her pale face as she resolutely drew him to her bed. 

His consideration swirled around her like the very air itself, gently caressing her form to note with curiosity the unfamiliar emotions that rolled off of her skin like a scent. Respectfully, carefully, he avoided making any direct contact with her soul and mind, her inner workings protected from his view. He noticed with interest how the moonlight cut through translucent lashes, how it caught in her silken hair and glowed. Crimson eyes met his own, honest desire and determination shaping the set of her brow. 

As she gently pulled him down onto the bed, Raizel's eyes, for the barest of moments, caught a glimpse of a bright moon through the open window. 

He froze in confusion as his body met with hers. Edian started and then lay still beneath him in alarm. The object of her infatuation didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t breathe. He faced away, expression shadowed by the soft curtain of his raven hair. 

After a long moment, Raizel pushed himself up off of her to stare out through the window into the night. The moon lay heavy and silver in the sky, utterly ordinary with exception to its inherent beauty. He blinked. For that one brief instant, he had seen it glowing red.

He was gone from the room before Edian could find the words to voice her distress. 

***  
For all the urgency of his flight, it took him far too long to return to his manor. The paths he had taken were dark and unknowable, no familiar souls reached out to beckon him home. 

When at last the dark spires of the mansion separated and rose from the forest around him, the moon had long since set. A blush of fresh sunlight traced the edge of the sky. The house and grounds stood deathly still. 

He came upon his brother seated in the dirt in the empty courtyard below his window. His hands were outstretched, a familiar red glow flowing and coalescing between pale fingers. A small piece of something bright rested in one palm. He looked up in surprise, frowning deeply upon recognizing Raizel. His eyes flashed and the glittering stream of soul vanished. He grasped the warm crystal tightly. 

"Brother, where is our House? Why is no one here?" Raizel's voice was soft from disuse. Confusion and dread filled him and gripped at his heart. 

"So now you choose to speak," his words came out sounding weary and strangely light. "We were the only Nobles here. There was no one else of note. The mixed-bloods and their contractors shall not threaten us any longer." 

Raizel reached out to sense more of the world around him, seeking some sign of the others. He straightened, drawing back into himself almost immediately. The familiar presence of their household was scattered faintly about them. It drifted on the wind and wrapped close around his brother's clenched fist. 

The Earth turned beneath their feet. The sun lit up the sky. His brother stood to face him.

Raizel took a single step forward. Blood splashed up in a perfect circle around them, flowing and swirling and seeking to block out the sky. Grandiose wings burst forth from his shoulders, unfurling elegantly. Crimson power gathered at his fingertips.

His brother smiled at him sadly, shaking his head. “You are damaged. I am not. You cannot carry out a sentence against me.”

As Raizel raised a hand towards him, he threw open their connection for the first time in centuries. His brother’s emotions washed over him, dragging him under and bringing him up short. He froze, overwhelmed at the sheer intensity of the anguish and loathing and guilt that crashed down upon his soul. 

When the oppressive onslaught was finally withdrawn, he blinked to find that his brother was gone. His own power had long since fallen dormant.

******  
The actions of the Noblesse triggered a great roiling upheaval among the Noble ranks. In the wake of his brother’s disappearance, news of his purge rippled through the other clans. In the rift that followed, civil war broke out between the twenty-eight Noble families. Nobles of mixed soul and descent were targeted as though they had held no relation to Nobles at all. The Central Order Knights were mercilessly laid to waste, slaughtered to a one. Human contractors were hunted down and ripped apart, the screams of their Bonded Nobles terrible and piercing. Human outposts were frivolously pilfered of life and will.

The Lord called upon the remaining Noblesse to stand at his side. Together, they put down pureblood Clan Leaders and stemmed the furious bleeding in their home, though the losses they suffered were abhorrent. Of the clans that remained, those left with relatively intact leaders were sent out to end the festering mutant plague. Like the flash of a spark, entire bloodlines were extinguished, their spilled blood unable to atone for the pain that was left in their passing.

Raizel’s heart was broken, and he bled for it. He brought his power to bear a dozen times in rapid succession, the Lord beside him laying waste to land and life alike. What they could not save filled his thoughts, what he had lost shook his very foundation and threatened to collapse him completely. His duty drove him forward, tirelessly and without objection. And after he had dealt with the carnage in his home, he set out to find his other half.

He was used to not being able to feel his brother. He had closed himself off from Raizel around the same time that he had stopped asking him to make judgments on his behalf. He had allowed his brother to do this without complaint, bearing the loss in silence. Now that he was looking for him, it was unnerving to not be able to find a trace. Always before, his brother would reach out to him when he was lost, guiding him home with the comet fire beacon that was his soul. Now all he had to light his path was a broken trail of ruined corpses, residual spiritual energy uncommonly lacking.

The Lord accompanied him on his journey, preventing him from straying out of reach and trusting his Clan Leaders to keep him informed of any events that would require his attention. The Lord was the one to identify the remains of the scaled behemoth sprawled out before Raizel, when he had never even conceived of the existence of such a thing in all the long years of his sheltered life. 

***  
Upon fleeing from his brother and his home, modest new bloodstone in hand, the other Noblesse immediately and tirelessly set about fulfilling his plans. The Nobles but rarely needed to be saved from anything other than themselves. And from themselves, they were most frequently undone by the temptations presented by the other races. To spare his twin the pain of spending himself to preserve Noble pride, he would eliminate the problem at its source. 

Ruthlessly, he swept through human nations, swiftly and easily stripping whole populations of life and precious spirit. The action barely took a toll on him. But he soon grew dissatisfied at his progress, as the human souls he took were not as substantial as the mixed-Nobles he had taken from his own estate. His brother was broken. He would require far greater energies to restore him to his original state of being.

Hearing rumors of the turmoil in Lukedonia, he cried out in anguish at what his people had surely taken from Raizel in the wake of his absence. Further pain that he had caused to his own brother. He hardened his resolve and turned his attention towards larger game. He sought out and crushed every werewolf tribe he could easily find, before shifting his focus toward myths and legends. To the fountainhead, the sources of the cautionary tales he had once heard were told to human children. He hunted down leviathans of the sea, titanic creatures upon the earth, and many _old_ things, hidden away in deep places. He spent of himself to collect greater treasures.

When he could find nothing else grand to present to his brother, he turned again to removing temptation from his people. One day, as he stood yet again in the center of a swirling pillar of red dust, adding faithfully to the crystal of his own careful creation, he picked up the beginnings of a shift in the wind. 

He could feel them coming for him. The Lord’s familiar aura crackled in the atmosphere like a latent electricity, Raizel’s passive energies shifted the very climate. He closed his eyes in nostalgia and breathed in deep. He knew that he should not attempt to escape from them, to waste what was left of his life and his brother's. Instead he stood still and waited. This was far from ideal, but he accepted the circumstances as they were of his own making. 

When at last they made their appearance before him, he opened tired eyes and nodded his greeting to Raizel. The field of power bled to fill the space around them. The Lord held Ragnarok aloft, poised to assist, waiting. Two sets of wings blossomed and spread. Pillars of blood tore the boundary between earth and sky. But none of this was necessary. He held out his offering to his brother with both hands, calm and unthreatening, smiling sadly. "This is for you." Tears of blood ran from relieved, tranquil eyes as he began to fade, dissolving into vibrant sparks that poured into the bright center of the bloodstone, his sentence carried out against himself. The stone fell heavily to the dirt. 

Power dissipated into nothing. The weather again turned bright and sunny. Raizel stood there upon the ruined earth, motionless in the haze of dirt and dust, a broken half of a whole. 

The Lord stepped past him and knelt down to gingerly collect the crystal from the ground. He set it in Raizel's unfeeling hands, pressing his fingers around its sharp warmth. 

Raizel's mind grew as hazy as the air around him. Numbly, he left. He could not recall how he ended up back in his home or the passage of time. When the first summons arrived for him, he allowed himself to be escorted to the Lord's palace. He stood at his side. He made his judgment, pronounced his sentence. And then he carried out his execution. The sole Noblesse, he took up his brother's mantle in addition to his own yoke. 

Acting alone and accountable to no one, a cloying anxiety and fear from his peers grew thick in his presence.

He returned to his window in the now-silent house. His brother's fractured soul lay captured, stored away in the confines of a sealed basement floor in their own home. Its call radiated out to twist and tease at Raizel's being, seeping into the very bones of the house, a contaminant. His brother whispered for them to be joined, to be burned up as energy in his brother's soul. It was never meant to be, as it was not in their design to continue on or be replenished. It was always their fate to burn themselves away.

The view from his window was empty. Leaves shuddered in the wind. Birds fluttered and nested. Clouds passed over the sun.

**Author's Note:**

> Question: Why are there no other fantastic creatures to speak of in this fantasy world? Answer: Rai’s brother killed them all. Yay, now I can move on.
> 
> I thought it might be reasonable to assert that, since Rai was all but forgotten by his people and his title was stripped of its meaning in the time since he’d disappeared, the meaning of the title could have been altered previously as well. Hence the title “The True Noblesse”. (Noblesse is both singular and plural.)
> 
> I kind of consider Rai’s brother’s name to have been *redacted*. I didn’t want to give him an original name or anything, so I just went with what I had. I hope that it wasn’t too confusing to read.
> 
> Rai’s house is huge, there were Probably other people there at some point.
> 
> I didn’t provide much detail on any side characters like the Lord because I have >No Idea< when these events took place. I’m not sure which characters would be the ones from the flashback era and which ones would have already passed on by that time. I mean, how old is Edian Drosia? (Lagus Traido was there too, I know, but that guy is a husk.) I sort of had in mind that the woman on trial was an Agvain, though. Just ‘cause.
> 
> I deviated from the original ordering of canon events because... I wanted to. Canon needed some help. But I tried to keep to the spirit of things, including the implied xenophobic Noble civil war, Rai’s brother having the blood stone and doing things for Rai, Edian’s involvement, the implication that Rai was harmed during the course of things, the bloodstone calling out to be used, and Rai guarding the stone in his house. (How did Frankenstein not notice that, btw?) And I don’t >think< that any of this would have had any bearing on later canon events. Rai’s brother is still dead, Rai is still sad, Edian still feels bad, there’s still a bloodstone in the basement for Lagus to steal (because plot). I ditched the canon lines because I didn’t want to try to force them in and have them stick out as being unnatural.
> 
> Thanks for reading. <3


End file.
